Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/179

167 thing especially amusing to relate, the letter is always addressed to her. In 1824 Miss Edgeworth lost her sister, Mrs. Beddoes. A few months before, Sophy was married to a Captain Fox. She was grieved to lose this sister, and the marriage affected her deeply.

Though Miss Edgeworth was now past fifty, she showed neither bodily nor mental signs of advancing years. Indeed, mentally she was as fresh and as young as ever, and her letters reflect the same pleasure in life and all it offers that they evinced throughout. Only on New Year's Day, which was also her birthday, does she indulge in any reflections concerning the flight of time. Here is a letter written in 1825:—

Not many days later, when her step-mother and some friends, "poor souls and full-dressed bodies," had gone out to dinner, she penned another long letter to the same correspondent, a letter delightfully fresh in tone and full of her personality:—

In a few days I trust—you know I am a great truster—you will receive a packet franked by Lord Bathurst, containing only a little